"In his classic book White Noise, author Don DeLillo surmises, "California deserves whatever it gets. Californians invented the concept of life-style." In her brand new book, Earthquakes, Mudslides, Fires & Riots, Louise Sandhaus unequivocally proves this true. At once breathtakingly beautiful and riotously robust, this is the first book ever to gather together a compendium of the great graphics of twentieth-century California. From the luscious line-work of Alvin Lustig to the psychedelia of Haight-Ashbury to the love letters of Ray Eames to the classic television titles of Phill Norman, Earthquakes… is an absolute must read, cover to cover, over and over." – Debbie Millman, President, Sterling Brands; Chair, School of Visual Arts Masters in Branding

"A raucous compendium of the best of the Wild West. A history lesson disguised as a delicious visual treat." – Roman Alonso, Commune

"While the book takes its title from the state's penchant for natural and man-made disasters, Earthquakes, Mudslides, Fires & Riots is more akin to the Golden State's famed agricultural production: a bountiful harvest of design staples, both indigenous and invasive, and other exotic and hybrid varietals. Sandhaus's project is an important and much-needed addition to graphic design history that underscores the Left Coast's outsized contributions to the field." – Andrew Blauvelt, Design Director and Curator, Walker Art Center

According to the cliché, California is the place where anything goes and everyone does their own thing. Maybe that’s because everyone knows that in California there’s no terra firma: earthquakes, mudslides, fires and the occasional civil uprising cause constant upheaval and change. California is fluid. It has a sense of humor. It is a place of constant innovation, where the entertainment, aerospace and high-tech industries found a home. California is the great mecca of consumerism, but it is also legendary as fertile ground for creativity, freedom and social consciousness, where the status quo undergoes constant renovation. Earthquakes, Mudslides, Fires & Riots is the first publication to capture the enormous body of distinctive and visually ecstatic graphic design that emanated from this great state throughout most of the twentieth century. Edited and designed by graphic designer Louise Sandhaus, this raucous gathering of smart, offbeat, groundbreaking graphic design from the “Left Coast” will amaze readers with its breadth and richness. The fruit of more than a decade of research, the volume is arranged in four sections: “Sunbaked Modernism,” “Industry and the Indies,” “60s Alt 60s” and “California Girls.” Included are books and magazines designed by Merle Armitage, Alvin Lustig, Herbert Matter and Sheila Levrant DeBretteville; posters for Disneyland, Cream and Herman Miller; Marget Larsen’s print ads for Joseph Magnin; title cards or title sequences for Lassie, The Smothers Brothers and other hit TV shows; title sequences for films from Taxi Driver to Tron; motion graphics from the earliest animated abstractions to the classic 7-Up “Bubbles” ad and Atari video games; immersive live shows of Bill Ham and Single Wing Turquoise Bird; architectural supergraphics by Barbara Stauffacher Solomon and Alexander Girard; print and environmental designs by Gere Kavanaugh and Deborah Sussman; and much, much more.

PRAISE AND REVIEWS

Unbeige

Stephanie Murg

To understand the shape-shifting nature of the California design scene, look no further than earthquakes, mudslides, fires, and riots. These natural and manmade disasters endemic to the Left Coast provide the cataclysmic title of a forthcoming book by Louise Sandhaus.

San Diego Magazine

Angela Carone

Sandhaus believes that designers took visual risks because the ground and culture was always shifting. This is the first collection celebrating distinctive, 20th-century graphic design coming out of California.

Metropolis Magazine

Komal Sharma

This book may not be a history lesson, but it's quite the trip, capturing the california state of mind. It has the classics, the fetishized, and the radical, but also the anonymous, the little known, and the graphic designs that were ahead of their time.

scpr.org

David Kipen

A book that explores The Golden State, not through words, but in graphics."Earthquakes! Mudslides! Fires! and Riots!: California Graphic Design, 1936-1986," by designer Louise Sandhaus. It isn't just a coffee table book -- it's a 'lap' book -- you can't leave it on the coffee table no matter how hard you try.

Grain Edit

The Editors

Edited and designed by graphic designer Louise Sandhaus, this raucous gathering of smart, offbeat, groundbreaking graphic design from the “Left Coast” will amaze readers with its breadth and richness.

The New York Times Book Review

Steven Heller

This sweeping attempt at a history of such an unsung hot spot for design exuberance may not be definitive. But it’s fun.

Designers & Books

The Editors

From the Publisher. Earthquakes, Mudslides, Fires & Riots is the first publication to capture the enormous body of distinctive and visually ecstatic graphic design that emanated from this great state throughout most of the twentieth century. Edited and designed by graphic designer Louise Sandhaus, this raucous gathering of smart, offbeat, groundbreaking graphic design from the “Left Coast” will amaze readers with its breadth and richness. The fruit of more than a decade of research, the volume is arranged in four sections: “Sunbaked Modernism,” “Industry and the Indies,” “60s Alt 60s” and “California Girls.” Included are books and magazines designed by Merle Armitage, Alvin Lustig, Herbert Matter and Sheila Levrant DeBretteville; posters for Disneyland, Cream and Herman Miller; Marget Larsen’s print ads for Joseph Magnin; title cards or title sequences for Lassie, The Smothers Brothers and other hit TV shows; title sequences for films from Taxi Driver to Tron; motion graphics from the earliest animated abstractions to the classic 7-Up “Bubbles” ad and Atari video games; immersive live shows of Bill Ham and Single Wing Turquoise Bird; architectural supergraphics by Barbara Stauffacher Solomon and Alexander Girard; print and environmental designs by Gere Kavanaugh and Deborah Sussman; and much, much more. With contributions by Denise Gonzales Crisp, Lorraine Wild, Michael Worthington.

KCRW, Design & Architecture

Frances Anderton

Worth buying for the cover alone, Earthquakes, Mudslides, Fires and Riots: California & Graphic Design 1936 – 1986 recalls a time when orange “was rarely utilized by serious graphic designers east of the Rockies.” Designer and CalArts professor Louise Sandhaus spent ten years on this subjective, sumptuous opus about California graphic design in the pre- and post-war years of the 20th century. 400 eye-popping pages show work of known and lesser-known California designers (including Merle Armitage, Alvin Lustig, Herbert Matter, Sheila Levrant de Bretteville, April Greiman and Deborah Sussman). Michael Worthington, Lorraine Wild and Denise Gonzales Crisp contribute illuminating essays.

The New York Times, Home Section

Alexandra Lange

And the same can be said of the new book “Earthquakes, Mudslides, Fires & Riots: California Graphic Design, 1936-1986” (Metropolis Books, $55), written and designed by Louise Sandhaus, 59, a graphic designer. As she writes in her introduction, she chose not to honor text over graphics, and she wasn’t interested in being definitive. Rather, looking through archives and talking to makers, she asked questions like, “Is this historically important work, versus is this fabulous and distinctive and sooooooo California?” The pieces in the book range in mood from the calm abstraction of John Follis’s “Arts & Architecture” magazine covers to the pixelated trips in David Theurer’s “I, Robot” Atari game.

The Guardian

Corrine Jones

A gorgeous new book highlights Californian designs for posters, books, magazines, record covers and more, over a 50-year period. “So what makes California design deserving of special attention?” asks the book’s editor, Louise Sandhaus, a graphic designer. “California has no terra firma – earthquakes, mudslides, fires and the occasional civil uprising cause incessant upheaval and change… Without solid ground, tradition lacks secure footing; old rules go out the door and new motivations rush in, resulting in new and vibrant forms.”

itsnicethat.com

Rob Alderson

As you’d expect this is a bright, colourful and celebratory book but there’s some impressively (and refreshingly) unpretentious design writing here too.

Slate

Kristin Hohenadel

The vibrantly designed book explores the transformation of European traditions in California; the culture of screen graphics, from film titles to video games; the influential women who shaped 20th-century design in California; and 1960s California graphic design.

fastcodesign.com

Carey Dunne

The book showcases more than 250 examples of groundbreaking graphic design projects from the left coast in the mid-20th century.

The Architect's Newspaper

Jeremy Mende

Earthquakes is a deeply informative and visually rewarding review of a place and time largely overlooked by more standardized histories. Its seismic effect will be two-fold: First, it firmly establishes the impact of California’s contribution to the development of an American modernism; and second, it reinforces the postmodern form of the “eccentric history”—a hybrid of personal experience and historical fact, à la Reyner Banham—as perhaps the only way to honor the multiplicities that we inadequately file under the title “modernism.”

Gizmodo

Alissa Walker

The book features exuberant, experimental specimens from hundreds of designers, splayed out across the pages with bright fluorescent pink and orange gradients, like the late summer sun sinking over the Pacific. And like the independent, free-spirited work that fills the pages, this is Sandhaus' personal take on the topic.

Print Magazine

Ellen Shapiro

Earthquakes, Mudslides is off the Richter Scale. Way more than a book, it’s building a community.

Santa Barbara Magazine

L. D. Porter

IT’S THE MUST-HAVE BOOK OF THE YEAR: Earthquakes, Mudslides, Fires & Riots: California & Graphic Design 1936-1986 (Metropolis, $55, chaucersbooks.com) written by Ojai resident/CalArts professor/designer Louise Sanhaus, lsd-studio.net. Ten years in the making, the 415-page tome is an eclectic romp through 50 years of California graphic design, including Saul Bass’s groundbreaking movie titles for Otto Preminger’s Man with the Golden Arm, psychedelic rock concert posters, the Whole Earth Catalog, and John Van Hamersveld’s iconic poster for the ’60s surf documentary The Endless Summer—an enduring image of the California dream.

Los Angeles Review of Books

Lyra Kilston

Wild’s observation, like many others in this captivating, dayglo-jacketed book, celebrates a visual history of an environment that seems to counter the stringent, sometimes monotone rules of both life and design.

Azure

Henry Tyminski

This colourful collection of Californian graphic art is as dramatic, mellow and full of twists as a scenic drive down the Pacific coast. As the title suggests, the state's graphic design is affected by its nervous history with its lively environment, which provides fertile soil for creativity and offbeat ideas.

Eye 90

Abbott Miller

Sandhaus has created a book worthy of its topic, with an engaging and provocative eye.

The Design Observer Group

Michael Bierut

The essential record of America’s most American design movement, in a form that perfectly matches its content.

Design Observer

Michael Bierut

The essential record of America's most American design movement, in a form that perfectly matches its content.

The Design Observer Group

Adrian Shaughnessy

A wonderfully eclectic, undogmatic, and free-wheeling crash zoom through a fertile era of exuberant and iconoclastic American visual expression.

CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 2/22/2015

February is the perfect month to think about California, and it’s always a perfect time to think and talk about the conditions that foster bold, risk-taking, ecstatic, and ground-shifting work. Thursday, February 26 from 6:30-8:30 PM, Louise Sandhaus will present themes and images from Earthquakes, Mudslides, Fires & Riots: California and Graphic Design, 1936-1986, in a discussion with California transplants Barbara Glauber and Lucille Tenazas, moderated by Alexandra Lange. The event will be followed by a book signing and a reception. Register here! continue to blog

CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 11/17/2014

Saturday, November 22, in celebration of the amazing new Metropolis book by Louise Sandhaus, the MOCA Store presents 'What a Riot!: An Earthquake, Two Mudslides, and a Girl on Fire' in the MOCA Theater. Join iconic Los Angeles graphic designers Lou Danziger, April Greiman, Richard Taylor (Robert Abel & Associates), and John Van Hamersveld in conversation on the legacy of California graphic design. Moderated by Alice Twemlow, with introduction by Sandhaus. continue to blog

CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 12/25/2015

Marget Larsen's 1963 wrapping paper for the "hip" mid-century department store Joseph Magnin, which catered to the "mod, young, postwar, baby-boomer consumer, is reproduced from Earthquakes, Mudslides, Fires & Riots, Metropolis Books' best-selling survey of California Graphic Design, 1936-1986. Authored by noted designer and CalArts treasure Louise Sandhaus, it's one of Michael Bierut's top design books of the last year for Design Observer. He writes, "Published in late 2014, but too good to keep off this list. The essential record of America’s most American design movement, in a form that perfectly matches its content." See more 2015 favorites here! >> continue to blog

CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 11/16/2014

Featured image, of Bill Pate and Gene Howard's 1960 "The Swinging Eye!!!!!!!!" album cover for Si Zentner and His Orchestra, is reproduced from Earthquakes, Mudslides, Fires & Riots, the first authoritative publication on California graphic design. Author Louise Sandhaus writes of the firm Group Five, which included Pate and Howard, "As Art Chantry, designer and design-critic provocateur, puts it: 'It was either THESES GUYS do your cover, or it was NOT a record cover. ' He says the team produced albums for the Rat Pack (Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., Peter Lawford, and Joey Bishop) and affiliated acts such as Nancy Sinatra and Dino, Desi & Billy (Dean Paul Martin, Desi Arnaz Jr., and Billy Hinsche) as well as Latin groups and the Beach Boys. 'They invented so many style genres that they may be the single greatest pop culture innovators of all time.'" continue to blog

CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 11/14/2014

Featured image, of Deborah Sussman and Lou Danziger's cover design for a 1968 H.C. Westermann exhibition catalogue for LACMA, is reproduced from Earthquakes, Mudslides, Fires & Riots: California and Graphic Design, 1936-1986, Louise Sandhaus' "herculean history of (and tribute to) the unique status and nature of graphic design in the Golden State—the result of ten years of research," according to Design Observer, which is featuring excerpts from the book all week. Sandhaus writes, "Opportunities for graphic design firms, as opposed to advertising agencies or renowned individuals, were still hard to come by when the LACMA curatorial group decided to hire local designers including Sussman and Lou Danziger. After meeting with Westermann, Sussman received a note from the artist that included a cartoon of an animal doing a handstand. It was signed, 'Respectfully, Cliff.' Sussman saw the drawing as a means to capture the essence of the wacky-spirited Westermann, an exercise buff. After taking a photo of him in the handstand pose, she adapted it with a rainbow coloring, and added the artist's salutation and a bright yellow background." continue to blog

According to the cliché, California is the place where anything goes and everyone does their own thing. Maybe that’s because everyone knows that in California there’s no terra firma: earthquakes, mudslides, fires and the occasional civil uprising cause constant upheaval and change. California is fluid. It has a sense of humor. It is a place of constant innovation, where the entertainment, aerospace and high-tech industries found a home. California is the great mecca of consumerism, but it is also legendary as fertile ground for creativity, freedom and social consciousness, where the status quo undergoes constant renovation.

Earthquakes, Mudslides, Fires & Riots is the first publication to capture the enormous body of distinctive and visually ecstatic graphic design that emanated from this great state throughout most of the twentieth century. Edited and designed by graphic designer Louise Sandhaus, this raucous gathering of smart, offbeat, groundbreaking graphic design from the “Left Coast” will amaze readers with its breadth and richness. The fruit of more than a decade of research, the volume is arranged in four sections: “Sunbaked Modernism,” “Industry and the Indies,” “60s Alt 60s” and “California Girls.” Included are books and magazines designed by Merle Armitage, Alvin Lustig, Herbert Matter and Sheila Levrant DeBretteville; posters for Disneyland, Cream and Herman Miller; Marget Larsen’s print ads for Joseph Magnin; title cards or title sequences for Lassie, The Smothers Brothers and other hit TV shows; title sequences for films from Taxi Driver to Tron; motion graphics from the earliest animated abstractions to the classic 7-Up “Bubbles” ad and Atari video games; immersive live shows of Bill Ham and Single Wing Turquoise Bird; architectural supergraphics by Barbara Stauffacher Solomon and Alexander Girard; print and environmental designs by Gere Kavanaugh and Deborah Sussman; and much, much more.